Analysis Of Ray Bradbury 's ' Fahrenheit 451 '

Imagine living in a world where you are not in control of your own thoughts. Imagine living in a world in which all the great thinkers of the past have been blurred from existence. Imagine living in a world where life no longer involves beauty, but instead a controlled system that the government is capable of manipulating. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, such a world is brought to the awareness of the reader through a description of the impacts of censorship and forced conformity on people living in a futuristic society. In this society, all works of literature have become a symbol of unnecessary controversy and are outlawed. Individuality and thought is outlawed. The human mind is

Over time people have gotten lazier and we have machines to blame. According to Ray Bradbury, “why learn anything save pressing buttons…”( Bradbury 53). In Bradbury’s society in Fahrenheit 451 people just sit back, relax, press a button, and watch a machine do the work for them. Much like in our society, people get lazy and just watch a machine do the work that they could be doing, and having no human interaction whatsoever. According to The Bottom Line, “Internet and mobile technology seems to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions we have with others.”(Technology Destroying Human Interaction). This is becoming the reality not only in Fahrenheit 451 but in our everyday society.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “That government is best which governs least…”. In Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury, the government puts extreme laws in place to “protect” the people. Except, that these laws keep the citizens from knowing the truth. The good laws like speed limit aren’t enforced and the things that shouldn’t matter, like owning a book, are so strongly enforced, that if it is you that is found to own a book, your house will be burnt down. The government keeps everyone in check by censoring the citizens. During the 1950’s, the entire country was in fear of communism. There was a blacklist of authors, actors, and public figures. No one would hire them or buy their work. Bradbury wanted to warn the country of what could happen if it continued being ignorant , and by using pathos, rhetorical questions, and repetition, he effectively conveyed his purpose.

This study examines the issue of freedom of information in the story of literary oppression found in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury presents the oppression of an authoritarian state that does not allow its citizens to reads books. Guy Montag is initially a servant of the state that requires him to locate and persecute members of the community that still collect books. In various cases, Bradbury defines the rights of certain citizens to rebel against Guy and the other “book burners”, which suggest liberation from tyranny and the freedom of information. Guy also becomes convenient that the policy to destroy books is a threat to civilization, and the rebellion allows him to change his views and to rebel against the government. More importantly, Clarisse’s role in inspiring Guy to revolt becomes a major catalyst for freeing the society from banning books that are deemed a threat to the social order. In essence, an analysis of freedom of information will be examined in this study of literary oppression found in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

​In a world where everything surrounding one is so different and so similar in the exact same time… Imagine a society where everything an individual can mentally and physically do is under the power of the government. Self-difference does not exist. In a futuristic setting of the novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ written by Ray Bradbury, and the short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’ written by Kurt Vonnegut are both two very eventful and interesting readings that will keep one’s mind running on about the outlook on futuristic life and the governments strict needs and wants throughout a society. These two stories can be compared and contrasted by the strict outlook on the governments control, demand and want over a society, the close relation the two main characters from both stories portray and the similar theme demonstrating loss of individuality.

This reflect remembers Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in The Hearth and the Salamander. Granger clearly sees that they need to evaluate who they really are before they start doing new things. Mirrors in the book Fahrenheit 451 are symbols or self-understanding of seeing oneself clearly. Mirrors can also be symbols of seeing who you really are from the outside to the inside. “Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them” (Bradbury

Visual media, such as the computer and television distract people from the natural world, and instead blinds them from reality. Fahrenheit 451 exposes the idea that mass visual media initiates problems of violence, unawareness, and ignorance. The advanced technology causes the people of society to stray farther away from reality, and they become trapped in their own world of unawareness. Thus, unlike in nature where everything is free, the advanced technology confines people within the boundaries that technology allows. The boundaries created by visual media imprison the people of society into a world of mental incapacity and illiteracy. This unfamiliarity with the world, shown by numerous characters, shows how society is negligent. For

Montag is someone who is shy and keeps his thoughts to himself, but thinks many things. He shows that he is distracted instead of being happy throughout the book. At the time, he was walking home from work and was looking at Clarisse. Clarisse is a girl who would roam the streets and was also Montag's neighbor. She walks over to Guy and they start to have a conversation while walking to their houses. They discussing if talking about to see if Montag is really happy or if he was lying. She keeps questioning him. Bradbury explains “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as true state affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run across the lawn with the mask and the way

“In the last 50 years, up to 100,000 Americans lost their lives due to inactivity leading to some sort of conditional disease such as heart disease [including the laziness within people of society]” (Wise 12). So many people have died from becoming lazy, doing nothing but go on their phones, devices, rather than doing everyday things. Technology has changed the way society approaches life, always depending on it rather than themselves and others. The society today consists of nothing but TV screens, telephone, smartphones, iPads, and items the 19th century would consider a dream to lay hands on. A book written by Bradbury presents lack of effort people put into their lives and society; Bradbury predicts how the future will become later on in the society. Becoming more similar to the laziness and ignorance in the novel, Fahrenheit 451, the society today struggles the society today struggles with dependency on technology which results to lack of social interactions with one another and failure in becoming literate with books.

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is set in 2053 in a city like Las Angeles. Bradbury wrote this novel in 1953, 100 years before the time this book was set. He intended to talk about a future society. Not only predicting a future society today but, predicting the way people are turning out. People in this society think it’s okay to burn pages of knowledge rather than read them. Firemen in this society have a job to burn books. The mood of this novel is terror and misery because people who own books live like this just to keep their books.

Before meeting Clarisse, Montag was a strong adherent of the societal function of book burning. He was rather oblivious to the ignorant and critically dull society he lived in. His meeting with Clarisse was the beginning of his Metamorphosis into a critically aware and enlightened individual, one who could see the errors of society in forming a bubble around them. This “bubble” forming that Clarisse leads Montag away from is a serious issue, and even affects our real modern day world.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a display of how humans are relying more and more on technology for entertainment at the price of their ability for intellectual development. It is a novel about technological dystopia, often compared to other novels such as, George Orwell’s 1984 and Asimov Ender’s Game. Although today’s technology has not quite caught up with Bradbury’s expectations, the threat of having his vision of a dystrophic society is very realistic. He sees a futuristic society in which this submission of thought is highly valued. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury displays a futuristic utopian society where "the people did not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think independently, or have meaningful conversations" (Mogen, Pg. 111).

An article states, “Technology should aide and entertain, not consume your time or overall functionality” (Kim Randall). Instead of using technology for needed help or some entertainment, people have become so addicted to it that they can no longer function without it. Montag’s wife, Mildred in Fahrenheit 451, stares at her three televisions that are the size of the walls, almost every minute of the day. She is surrounded by gruesome television programs with no plot or she can talk to the characters in her shows by following a script. Thinking is not required while participating in the dull program, she just reads off a piece of paper. From being persistently near screens and noises that interrupt thought processes, Mildred and Montag are unable to recall where they first met, although it was only ten years ago. Unfortunately, Mildred is more interested in her precious televisions than her husband, and due to these pointless television shows and countless wasted hours, Mildred is dangerously forgetful. One night Mildred overdoses after taking her entire bottle of sleeping pills. The next morning when she doesn’t believe she would do such a thing, Montag suggests, “Maybe you took two pills and forgot and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and were so dopey you kept right on until you had thirty of forty of them

Ray Bradbury 's novel, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, depicts a grim and also quite feasible prediction of a futuristic world. In Bradbury 's technology-obsessed society, a clear view of the horrific effects that a fixation for mindlessness would have on a civilization shows through his writing. Being carefree is encouraged while people who think "outside the box" are swiftly and effectively removed. The technology Bradbury 's society is designed to keep the people uninformed, which the vast majority of are happily and voluntarily in their ignorant state. There are many details in this novel that suggest that the future of a society obsessed with advanced technology is not

Technological advances have certainly entered this era to facilitate people’s lives. There is no doubt that some new technology has been created to help operate or effectively manage time in a way that would be beneficial to humans. Technology significantly helps a number of people. A group that greatly benefits with the advances of technology is teenagers. Teens constantly use computers for schoolwork, networking, or knowing anything they want to know with a simple use of their fingertips. Furthermore, with the advances it is no longer needed to leave the household to run an errand such as going out to pay a bill or do some shopping. As technology advances and enters the life of mostly all humans many begin to question how healthy these technological advances truly are. A couple of decades ago kids spent their time outside playing with their friends by the same token with items that did not require the use of electricity. Kids and adolescents would dedicate at least a part of their day to reading books and gaining knowledge from there instead of social media. Distinctively today’s adolescents instead of reading books will go on the internet for a summary and inform themselves in less than 5 minutes, spent their time inside playing video games or on their cellphones allowing technology to be the only thing they know and rely on to have fun or be informed. Moreover, this guides us to the points Ray Bradbury makes in his novel Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury touches on several